Nice FM Update

[Gunfreak]

13 hours ago, anlq said:

I bet you can't win a BF109. beside A8 is a less powerful plane than a Dora. I don't know what level of AI you used, but this AI plane is somehow .... stupid. With decent AI, they always try to out climb you at first.  
Edit: I tried against the A8, it's easy. 

If you turn inside the enemy, the AI will break and they'll go into "defence mode" which is a lazy turn. Which means flying the Spitfire, once you've turned inside the circle. You can just keep turning, while you reel ib the Germans until you hit them. 

This works in 1 v 1 fights. The AI also seem to have a offensive mode. Which is much more aggressive. So Paradoxically. It's much harder to get behind and take out the enemy AI if that enemy is in offensive mode, trying to shoot down one of your allied aircraft. Realistically if you're the only enemy the AI has to deal with, it should put up much more of a fight. But the AI doesn't work like that. 

 

I've also observed that if you damage the enemy sufficiently it will maneuver much more then if it's undamaged.

 

I've seen it many times, I pull a 109 or 190 into my gunsights in the Spitfire. Because the AI is now "trapped " in that lazy turn behaviour. If i shoot well the aircraft goes down. If i shoot badly. Damaging parts of the aircraft, but not mortality wounding it(like shooting of one of the aellerons ) the AI will kick into gear and maneuver violently to avoid getting hit. It will roll, dive, tighten up the turn weeve about. 

This is stuff I've seen many times over the years fighting the ww2 AI.

 

In a 1 v 1 the P51 vs 109 seem to give the best fights. They are somewhat similar in speed and use. The Spitfire and I16 breaks the AI as you'll immediately turn inside their turn. 

The Anton is a bit like Orcs. Not much danger unless there's a lot of them.  Same really with the Dora too. Both 190s are easy game for p51 and Spitfire. And the P47 usually handles them fine too. 

[Nealius]

My experience with the AI is that the FM is so deplorable that they're not even worth fighting. I've seen P-47s go pure vertical from 200ft to 2000ft, info bar showing 83KCAS, no stall behavior whatsoever, and just accelerate back to normal 200KCAS flight with no loss in altitude.

[Lidozin]

9 minutes ago, Nealius said:

My experience with the AI is that the FM is so deplorable that they're not even worth fighting. I've seen P-47s go pure vertical from 200ft to 2000ft, info bar showing 83KCAS, no stall behavior whatsoever, and just accelerate back to normal 200KCAS flight with no loss in altitude.

If the aircraft was flying purely vertically, as described, then stall behavior in the conventional sense wouldn’t be expected — because the wings are not generating lift in the traditional way during a vertical ascent. Stall is a function of exceeding the critical angle of attack while attempting to produce lift; in vertical flight, the aircraft is no longer attempting to balance its weight with lift but is instead relying entirely on thrust and inertia.

If, after this vertical segment, the aircraft transitioned into level flight by gradually reducing pitch angle, it would have done so in a partially unloaded state, producing lift below 1g. In that case, as long as it had retained sufficient energy, it could re-establish normal flight once its speed increased above the minimum sustainable airspeed.

This sort of behavior — while seemingly unusual — is consistent with known energy-state transitions and doesn’t inherently indicate that the FM is being violated.
 

Additionally, it's worth noting that low-speed unloaded flight (i.e., with load factor below 1g) is actually one of the most energy-efficient modes of flight for propeller-driven aircraft. This is primarily because:

 Since induced drag is directly related to lift (and increases with the square of load factor), reducing lift demand below 1g sharply reduces drag — especially important at low speeds, where induced drag dominates. Unlike jet engines, piston engines and propellers are well-suited to producing useful thrust even when the aircraft is slow, allowing for continued acceleration or climb, provided excess power is available.

When not fighting against gravity with full lift, the aircraft retains more of its kinetic and potential energy, allowing it to convert between the two more gradually — for example, by accelerating in a shallow dive back to sustainable flight conditions.

This makes unloaded low-speed flight a perfectly valid and sometimes optimal maneuvering regime, especially when trying to recover from steep climbs or regain speed after vertical maneuvers — assuming the aircraft has sufficient power to avoid settling into an unrecoverable descent.

It would also be possible to replicate the same maneuver manually, starting from identical initial conditions. If the aircraft’s configuration and power allow, entering a vertical climb followed by unloaded low-speed flight and gradual pitch-down can result in a smooth transition back to controlled level flight — just as seen in the AI’s case.

[Nealius]

P-47 stall speed with flaps up is 99kts or thereabouts. Going vertical for a 2000ft altitude gain then nosing over for level flight without losing much more than 100ft in the process at 83kts with flaps up, two bombs, and two bazooka rocket racks is a violation of physics. 

[anlq]

7 hours ago, Nealius said:

P-47 stall speed with flaps up is 99kts or thereabouts. Going vertical for a 2000ft altitude gain then nosing over for level flight without losing much more than 100ft in the process at 83kts with flaps up, two bombs, and two bazooka rocket racks is a violation of physics. 

I was angry seeing an AI P47 climbing like an UFO in front of my Corsair's nose. 

[Mr_sukebe]

26 minutes ago, anlq said:

I was angry seeing an AI P47 climbing like an UFO in front of my Corsair's nose. 

Have you tried putting in setting for the AI aircraft of "afterburners" - disable?

If not, give it a go.

Apparently, the AI Warbird pilots can and will happily use WEP, and don't have the same time limits that we as pilots do.  The "afterburners" setting, when disabled with a warbird, now prevents AI using WEP all the time.

[GUCCI]

4 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Have you tried putting in setting for the AI aircraft of "afterburners" - disable?

Huh, I don't believe I ever saw this option. Is it in the menu or LUA magic? Always frustrated when I'd play warbird campaigns that had you as a wingman, and everyone was outclimbing you to the desired formation altitude despite using the operational climb settings, this might help with that! thanks

[Mr_sukebe]

1 hour ago, GUCCI said:

Huh, I don't believe I ever saw this option. Is it in the menu or LUA magic? Always frustrated when I'd play warbird campaigns that had you as a wingman, and everyone was outclimbing you to the desired formation altitude despite using the operational climb settings, this might help with that! thanks

It’s a fairly new action that can be added for AI whilst putting together the Waypoint details 

[MAXsenna]

Huh, I don't believe I ever saw this option. Is it in the menu or LUA magic? Always frustrated when I'd play warbird campaigns that had you as a wingman, and everyone was outclimbing you to the desired formation altitude despite using the operational climb settings, this might help with that! thanks

Mission Editor. Personally, it should be in the General Settings as an option, so mission creators can enforce or forget about it.

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